LaTeX is a programming language to typeset documents using TeX and is
widely used in the physical sciences. Most publishers of journals in
astronomy, physics, and mathematics prefer or require authors to use
this language. It offers extensive facilities to automate most
aspects of typesetting, including numbering and cross-referencing of
sections, tables, figures, pages, contents, indices, and
bibliographies. For the latter, BibTeX automates the citation and
reference production. In astronomy, coupling of LaTeX and BibTeX with
the huge ADS literature database
is particularly
efficient.

The first subsection below contains a succinct manual for writing
a report or article with LaTeX and BibTeX, with an example and a template.
More recipes for combining LaTex, BibTeX and ADS are given
under Recipes for bibtex with
ADS.